arms of fire like a cuttle-fish, like a luminous polyp, palpitating
strongly before her.
And his shadow on the border of the pond, was watching for a few
moments, then he stooped and groped on the ground. Then again there was
a burst of sound, and a burst of brilliant light, the moon had exploded
on the water, and was flying asunder in flakes of white and dangerous
fire. Rapidly, like white birds, the fires all broken rose across the
pond, fleeing in clamorous confusion, battling with the flock of dark
waves that were forcing their way in. The furthest waves of light,
fleeing out, seemed to be clamouring against the shore for escape, the
waves of darkness came in heavily, running under towards the centre.
But at the centre, the heart of all, was still a vivid, incandescent
quivering of a white moon not quite destroyed, a white body of fire
writhing and striving and not even now broken open, not yet violated.
It seemed to be drawing itself together with strange, violent pangs, in
blind effort. It was getting stronger, it was re-asserting itself, the
inviolable moon. And the rays were hastening in in thin lines of light,
to return to the strengthened moon, that shook upon the water in
triumphant reassumption.
Birkin stood and watched, motionless, till the pond was almost calm,
the moon was almost serene. Then, satisfied of so much, he looked for
more stones. She felt his invisible tenacity. And in a moment again,
the broken lights scattered in explosion over her face, dazzling her;
and then, almost immediately, came the second shot. The moon leapt up
white and burst through the air. Darts of bright light shot asunder,
darkness swept over the centre. There was no moon, only a battlefield
of broken lights and shadows, running close together. Shadows, dark and
heavy, struck again and again across the place where the heart of the
moon had been, obliterating it altogether. The white fragments pulsed
up and down, and could not find where to go, apart and brilliant on the
water like the petals of a rose that a wind has blown far and wide.
Yet again, they were flickering their way to the centre, finding the
path blindly, enviously. And again, all was still, as Birkin and Ursula
watched. The waters were loud on the shore. He saw the moon regathering
itself insidiously, saw the heart of the rose intertwining vigorously
and blindly, calling back the scattered fragments, winning home the
fragments, in a pulse and in effort of return.
And he was not satisfied. Like a madness, he must go on. He got large
stones, and threw them, one after the other, at the white-burning
centre of the moon, till there was nothing but a rocking of hollow
noise, and a pond surged up, no moon any more, only a few broken flakes
tangled and glittering broadcast in the darkness, without aim or
meaning, a darkened confusion, like a black and white kaleidoscope
tossed at random. The hollow night was rocking and crashing with noise,
and from the sluice came sharp, regular flashes of sound. Flakes of
light appeared here and there, glittering tormented among the shadows,
far off, in strange places; among the dripping shadow of the willow on
the island. Birkin stood and listened and was satisfied.
Ursula was dazed, her mind was all gone. She felt she had fallen to the
ground and was spilled out, like water on the earth. Motionless and
spent she remained in the gloom. Though even now she was aware,
unseeing, that in the darkness was a little tumult of ebbing flakes of
light, a cluster dancing secretly in a round, twining and coming
steadily together. They were gathering a heart again, they were coming
once more into being. Gradually the fragments caught together
re-united, heaving, rocking, dancing, falling back as in panic, but
working their way home again persistently, making semblance of fleeing
away when they had advanced, but always flickering nearer, a little
closer to the mark, the cluster growing mysteriously larger and
brighter, as gleam after gleam fell in with the whole, until a ragged
rose, a distorted, frayed moon was shaking upon the waters again,
re-asserted, renewed, trying to recover from its convulsion, to get
over the disfigurement and the agitation, to be whole and composed, at
peace.
Birkin lingered vaguely by the water. Ursula was afraid that he would
stone the moon again. She slipped from her seat and went down to him,
saying:
'You won't throw stones at it any more, will you?'
'How long have you been there?'
'All the time. You won't throw any more stones, will you?'
'I wanted to see if I could make it be quite gone off the pond,' he
said.
'Yes, it was horrible, really. Why should you hate the moon? It hasn't
done you any harm, has it?'
'Was it hate?' he said.
And they were silent for a few minutes.
'When did you come back?' she said.
'Today.'
'Why did you never write?'
'I could find nothing to say.'
'Why was there nothing to say?'
'I don't know. Why are there no daffodils now?'
'No.'
Again there was a space of silence. Ursula looked at the moon. It had
gathered itself together, and was quivering slightly.
'Was it good for you, to be alone?' she asked.
'Perhaps. Not that I know much. But I got over a good deal. Did you do
anything important?'
'No. I looked at England, and thought I'd done with it.'
'Why England?' he asked in surprise.
'I don't know, it came like that.'
'It isn't a question of nations,' he said. 'France is far worse.'
'Yes, I know. I felt I'd done with it all.'
They went and sat down on the roots of the trees, in the shadow. And
being silent, he remembered the beauty of her eyes, which were
sometimes filled with light, like spring, suffused with wonderful
promise. So he said to her, slowly, with difficulty:
'There is a golden light in you, which I wish you would give me.' It
was as if he had been thinking of this for some time.
She was startled, she seemed to leap clear of him. Yet also she was
pleased.
'What kind of a light,' she asked.
But he was shy, and did not say any more. So the moment passed for this
time. And gradually a feeling of sorrow came over her.
'My life is unfulfilled,' she said.
'Yes,' he answered briefly, not wanting to hear this.
'And I feel as if nobody could ever really love me,' she said.
But he did not answer.
'You think, don't you,' she said slowly, 'that I only want physical
things? It isn't true. I want you to serve my spirit.'
'I know you do. I know you don't want physical things by themselves.
But, I want you to give me--to give your spirit to me--that golden
light which is you--which you don't know--give it me--'
After a moment's silence she replied:
'But how can I, you don't love me! You only want your own ends. You
don't want to serve ME, and yet you want me to serve you. It is so
one-sided!'
It was a great effort to him to maintain this conversation, and to
press for the thing he wanted from her, the surrender of her spirit.
'It is different,' he said. 'The two kinds of service are so different.
I serve you in another way--not through YOURSELF--somewhere else. But I
want us to be together without bothering about ourselves--to be really
together because we ARE together, as if it were a phenomenon, not a not
a thing we have to maintain by our own effort.'
'No,' she said, pondering. 'You are just egocentric. You never have any
enthusiasm, you never come out with any spark towards me. You want
yourself, really, and your own affairs. And you want me just to be
there, to serve you.'
But this only made him shut off from her.
'Ah well,' he said, 'words make no matter, any way. The thing IS
between us, or it isn't.'
'You don't even love me,' she cried.
'I do,' he said angrily. 'But I want--' His mind saw again the lovely
golden light of spring transfused through her eyes, as through some
wonderful window. And he wanted her to be with him there, in this world
of proud indifference. But what was the good of telling her he wanted
this company in proud indifference. What was the good of talking, any
way? It must happen beyond the sound of words. It was merely ruinous to
try to work her by conviction. This was a paradisal bird that could
never be netted, it must fly by itself to the heart.
'I always think I am going to be loved--and then I am let down. You
DON'T love me, you know. You don't want to serve me. You only want
yourself.'
A shiver of rage went over his veins, at this repeated: 'You don't want
to serve me.' All the paradisal disappeared from him.
'No,' he said, irritated, 'I don't want to serve you, because there is
nothing there to serve. What you want me to serve, is nothing, mere
nothing. It isn't even you, it is your mere female quality. And I
wouldn't give a straw for your female ego--it's a rag doll.'
'Ha!' she laughed in mockery. 'That's all you think of me, is it? And
then you have the impudence to say you love me.'
She rose in anger, to go home.
You want the paradisal unknowing,' she said, turning round on him as he
still sat half-visible in the shadow. 'I know what that means, thank
you. You want me to be your thing, never to criticise you or to have
anything to say for myself. You want me to be a mere THING for you! No
thank you! IF you want that, there are plenty of women who will give it
to you. There are plenty of women who will lie down for you to walk
over them--GO to them then, if that's what you want--go to them.'
'No,' he said, outspoken with anger. 'I want you to drop your assertive
WILL, your frightened apprehensive self-insistence, that is what I
want. I want you to trust yourself so implicitly, that you can let
yourself go.'
'Let myself go!' she re-echoed in mockery. 'I can let myself go, easily
enough. It is you who can't let yourself go, it is you who hang on to
yourself as if it were your only treasure. YOU--YOU are the Sunday
school teacher--YOU--you preacher.'
The amount of truth that was in this made him stiff and unheeding of
her.
'I don't mean let yourself go in the Dionysic ecstatic way,' he said.
'I know you can do that. But I hate ecstasy, Dionysic or any other.
It's like going round in a squirrel cage. I want you not to care about
yourself, just to be there and not to care about yourself, not to
insist--be glad and sure and indifferent.'
'Who insists?' she mocked. 'Who is it that keeps on insisting? It isn't
ME!'
There was a weary, mocking bitterness in her voice. He was silent for
some time.
'I know,' he said. 'While ever either of us insists to the other, we
are all wrong. But there we are, the accord doesn't come.'
They sat in stillness under the shadow of the trees by the bank. The
night was white around them, they were in the darkness, barely
conscious.
Gradually, the stillness and peace came over them. She put her hand
tentatively on his. Their hands clasped softly and silently, in peace.
'Do you really love me?' she said.
He laughed.
'I call that your war-cry,' he replied, amused.
'Why!' she cried, amused and really wondering.
'Your insistence--Your war-cry--"A Brangwen, A Brangwen"--an old
battle-cry. Yours is, "Do you love me? Yield knave, or die."'
'No,' she said, pleading, 'not like that. Not like that. But I must
know that you love me, mustn't I?'
'Well then, know it and have done with it.'
'But do you?'
'Yes, I do. I love you, and I know it's final. It is final, so why say
any more about it.'
She was silent for some moments, in delight and doubt.
'Are you sure?' she said, nestling happily near to him.
'Quite sure--so now have done--accept it and have done.'
She was nestled quite close to him.
'Have done with what?' she murmured, happily.
'With bothering,' he said.
She clung nearer to him. He held her close, and kissed her softly,
gently. It was such peace and heavenly freedom, just to fold her and
kiss her gently, and not to have any thoughts or any desires or any
will, just to be still with her, to be perfectly still and together, in
a peace that was not sleep, but content in bliss. To be content in
bliss, without desire or insistence anywhere, this was heaven: to be
together in happy stillness.
For a long time she nestled to him, and he kissed her softly, her hair,
her face, her ears, gently, softly, like dew falling. But this warm
breath on her ears disturbed her again, kindled the old destructive
fires. She cleaved to him, and he could feel his blood changing like
quicksilver.
'But we'll be still, shall we?' he said.
'Yes,' she said, as if submissively.
And she continued to nestle against him.
But in a little while she drew away and looked at him.
'I must be going home,' she said.
'Must you--how sad,' he replied.
She leaned forward and put up her mouth to be kissed.
'Are you really sad?' she murmured, smiling.
'Yes,' he said, 'I wish we could stay as we were, always.'
'Always! Do you?' she murmured, as he kissed her. And then, out of a
full throat, she crooned 'Kiss me! Kiss me!' And she cleaved close to
him. He kissed her many times. But he too had his idea and his will. He
wanted only gentle communion, no other, no passion now. So that soon
she drew away, put on her hat and went home.
The next day however, he felt wistful and yearning. He thought he had
been wrong, perhaps. Perhaps he had been wrong to go to her with an
idea of what he wanted. Was it really only an idea, or was it the
interpretation of a profound yearning? If the latter, how was it he was
always talking about sensual fulfilment? The two did not agree very
well.
Suddenly he found himself face to face with a situation. It was as
simple as this: fatally simple. On the one hand, he knew he did not
want a further sensual experience--something deeper, darker, than
ordinary life could give. He remembered the African fetishes he had
seen at Halliday's so often. There came back to him one, a statuette
about two feet high, a tall, slim, elegant figure from West Africa, in
dark wood, glossy and suave. It was a woman, with hair dressed high,
like a melon-shaped dome. He remembered her vividly: she was one of his
soul's intimates. Her body was long and elegant, her face was crushed
tiny like a beetle's, she had rows of round heavy collars, like a
column of quoits, on her neck. He remembered her: her astonishing
cultured elegance, her diminished, beetle face, the astounding long
elegant body, on short, ugly legs, with such protuberant buttocks, so
weighty and unexpected below her slim long loins. She knew what he
himself did not know. She had thousands of years of purely sensual,
purely unspiritual knowledge behind her. It must have been thousands of
years since her race had died, mystically: that is, since the relation
between the senses and the outspoken mind had broken, leaving the
experience all in one sort, mystically sensual. Thousands of years ago,
that which was imminent in himself must have taken place in these
Africans: the goodness, the holiness, the desire for creation and
productive happiness must have lapsed, leaving the single impulse for
knowledge in one sort, mindless progressive knowledge through the
senses, knowledge arrested and ending in the senses, mystic knowledge
in disintegration and dissolution, knowledge such as the beetles have,
which live purely within the world of corruption and cold dissolution.
This was why her face looked like a beetle's: this was why the
Egyptians worshipped the ball-rolling scarab: because of the principle
of knowledge in dissolution and corruption.
There is a long way we can travel, after the death-break: after that
point when the soul in intense suffering breaks, breaks away from its
organic hold like a leaf that falls. We fall from the connection with
life and hope, we lapse from pure integral being, from creation and
liberty, and we fall into the long, long African process of purely
sensual understanding, knowledge in the mystery of dissolution.
He realised now that this is a long process--thousands of years it
takes, after the death of the creative spirit. He realised that there
were great mysteries to be unsealed, sensual, mindless, dreadful
mysteries, far beyond the phallic cult. How far, in their inverted
culture, had these West Africans gone beyond phallic knowledge? Very,
very far. Birkin recalled again the female figure: the elongated, long,
long body, the curious unexpected heavy buttocks, he long, imprisoned
neck, the face with tiny features like a beetle's. This was far beyond
any phallic knowledge, sensual subtle realities far beyond the scope of
phallic investigation.
There remained this way, this awful African process, to be fulfilled.
It would be done differently by the white races. The white races,
having the arctic north behind them, the vast abstraction of ice and
snow, would fulfil a mystery of ice-destructive knowledge,
snow-abstract annihilation. Whereas the West Africans, controlled by
the burning death-abstraction of the Sahara, had been fulfilled in
sun-destruction, the putrescent mystery of sun-rays.
Was this then all that remained? Was there left now nothing but to
break off from the happy creative being, was the time up? Is our day of
creative life finished? Does there remain to us only the strange, awful
afterwards of the knowledge in dissolution, the African knowledge, but
different in us, who are blond and blue-eyed from the north?
Birkin thought of Gerald. He was one of these strange white wonderful
demons from the north, fulfilled in the destructive frost mystery. And
was he fated to pass away in this knowledge, this one process of
frost-knowledge, death by perfect cold? Was he a messenger, an omen of
the universal dissolution into whiteness and snow?
Birkin was frightened. He was tired too, when he had reached this
length of speculation. Suddenly his strange, strained attention gave
way, he could not attend to these mysteries any more. There was another
way, the way of freedom. There was the paradisal entry into pure,
single being, the individual soul taking precedence over love and
desire for union, stronger than any pangs of emotion, a lovely state of
free proud singleness, which accepted the obligation of the permanent
connection with others, and with the other, submits to the yoke and
leash of love, but never forfeits its own proud individual singleness,
even while it loves and yields.
There was the other way, the remaining way. And he must run to follow
it. He thought of Ursula, how sensitive and delicate she really was,
her skin so over-fine, as if one skin were wanting. She was really so
marvellously gentle and sensitive. Why did he ever forget it? He must
go to her at once. He must ask her to marry him. They must marry at
once, and so make a definite pledge, enter into a definite communion.
He must set out at once and ask her, this moment. There was no moment
to spare.
He drifted on swiftly to Beldover, half-unconscious of his own
movement. He saw the town on the slope of the hill, not straggling, but
as if walled-in with the straight, final streets of miners' dwellings,
making a great square, and it looked like Jerusalem to his fancy. The
world was all strange and transcendent.
Rosalind opened the door to him. She started slightly, as a young girl
will, and said:
'Oh, I'll tell father.'
With which she disappeared, leaving Birkin in the hall, looking at some
reproductions from Picasso, lately introduced by Gudrun. He was
admiring the almost wizard, sensuous apprehension of the earth, when
Will Brangwen appeared, rolling down his shirt sleeves.
'Well,' said Brangwen, 'I'll get a coat.' And he too disappeared for a
moment. Then he returned, and opened the door of the drawing-room,
saying:
'You must excuse me, I was just doing a bit of work in the shed. Come
inside, will you.'
Birkin entered and sat down. He looked at the bright, reddish face of
the other man, at the narrow brow and the very bright eyes, and at the
rather sensual lips that unrolled wide and expansive under the black
cropped moustache. How curious it was that this was a human being! What
Brangwen thought himself to be, how meaningless it was, confronted with
the reality of him. Birkin could see only a strange, inexplicable,
almost patternless collection of passions and desires and suppressions
and traditions and mechanical ideas, all cast unfused and disunited
into this slender, bright-faced man of nearly fifty, who was as
unresolved now as he was at twenty, and as uncreated. How could he be
the parent of Ursula, when he was not created himself. He was not a
parent. A slip of living flesh had been transmitted through him, but
the spirit had not come from him. The spirit had not come from any
ancestor, it had come out of the unknown. A child is the child of the
mystery, or it is uncreated.
'The weather's not so bad as it has been,' said Brangwen, after waiting
a moment. There was no connection between the two men.
'No,' said Birkin. 'It was full moon two days ago.'
'Oh! You believe in the moon then, affecting the weather?'
'No, I don't think I do. I don't really know enough about it.'
'You know what they say? The moon and the weather may change together,
but the change of the moon won't change the weather.'
'Is that it?' said Birkin. 'I hadn't heard it.'
There was a pause. Then Birkin said:
'Am I hindering you? I called to see Ursula, really. Is she at home?'
'I don't believe she is. I believe she's gone to the library. I'll just
see.'
Birkin could hear him enquiring in the dining-room.
'No,' he said, coming back. 'But she won't be long. You wanted to speak
to her?'
Birkin looked across at the other man with curious calm, clear eyes.
'As a matter of fact,' he said, 'I wanted to ask her to marry me.'
A point of light came on the golden-brown eyes of the elder man.
'O-oh?' he said, looking at Birkin, then dropping his eyes before the
calm, steadily watching look of the other: 'Was she expecting you
then?'
'No,' said Birkin.
'No? I didn't know anything of this sort was on foot--' Brangwen smiled
awkwardly.
Birkin looked back at him, and said to himself: 'I wonder why it should
be "on foot"!' Aloud he said:
'No, it's perhaps rather sudden.' At which, thinking of his
relationship with Ursula, he added--'but I don't know--'
'Quite sudden, is it? Oh!' said Brangwen, rather baffled and annoyed.
'In one way,' replied Birkin, '--not in another.'
There was a moment's pause, after which Brangwen said:
'Well, she pleases herself--'
'Oh yes!' said Birkin, calmly.
A vibration came into Brangwen's strong voice, as he replied:
'Though I shouldn't want her to be in too big a hurry, either. It's no
good looking round afterwards, when it's too late.'
'Oh, it need never be too late,' said Birkin, 'as far as that goes.'
'How do you mean?' asked the father.
'If one repents being married, the marriage is at an end,' said Birkin.
'You think so?'
'Yes.'
'Ay, well that may be your way of looking at it.'
Birkin, in silence, thought to himself: 'So it may. As for YOUR way of
looking at it, William Brangwen, it needs a little explaining.'
'I suppose,' said Brangwen, 'you know what sort of people we are? What
sort of a bringing-up she's had?'
'"She",' thought Birkin to himself, remembering his childhood's
corrections, 'is the cat's mother.'
'Do I know what sort of a bringing-up she's had?' he said aloud.
He seemed to annoy Brangwen intentionally.
'Well,' he said, 'she's had everything that's right for a girl to
have--as far as possible, as far as we could give it her.'
'I'm sure she has,' said Birkin, which caused a perilous full-stop. The
father was becoming exasperated. There was something naturally irritant
to him in Birkin's mere presence.
'And I don't want to see her going back on it all,' he said, in a
clanging voice.
'Why?' said Birkin.
This monosyllable exploded in Brangwen's brain like a shot.
'Why! I don't believe in your new-fangled ways and new-fangled
ideas--in and out like a frog in a gallipot. It would never do for me.'
Birkin watched him with steady emotionless eyes. The radical antagnoism
in the two men was rousing.
'Yes, but are my ways and ideas new-fangled?' asked Birkin.
'Are they?' Brangwen caught himself up. 'I'm not speaking of you in
particular,' he said. 'What I mean is that my children have been
brought up to think and do according to the religion I was brought up
in myself, and I don't want to see them going away from THAT.'
There was a dangerous pause.
'And beyond that--?' asked Birkin.
The father hesitated, he was in a nasty position.
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